It's not like we couldn't see it coming...
Submitted by Rex Bell on Fri, 08/14/2009 - 9:25pm.
"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves, in the course of time, a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it." - Frederic Bastiat
Bastiat saw it coming over 150 years ago.
There are a lot of people justifying the push for a national health care system by claiming health care is a right. I suppose in one respect it is. Certainly every person has the right to seek health care, and we would hard-pressed to justify a reason to forcibly prevent a person from receiving it.
Every person also has the right to own property, but they don't have the right to forcibly take it from another person. It's the same with health care. You don't have the right to force someone else to pay for yours.
As Bastiat predicted, we have created a tax system that uses force, or the threat of force, to take the property of one person and give it to another person, and we pretend that taking another persons property is morally acceptable as long as a majority of our elected officials think it will be used for a good cause.
Rights exist for individuals, and they would exist even if the government didn't define them. It doesn't create a conflict to claim that health care is a right, but it does when we claim that free health care is a right. If the government doesn't provide free health care, do you have the right to forcibly take it from someone else? I would maintain no one has that right.
An argument could certainly be made that we have a moral obligation to help those less fortunate among us. I would agree that we do.
But we don't need a government that tries to legislate morals, anymore than we need a government that tries to redefine rights.
Or authorizes plunder.
Tags: Government health care
Bastiat saw it coming over 150 years ago.
There are a lot of people justifying the push for a national health care system by claiming health care is a right. I suppose in one respect it is. Certainly every person has the right to seek health care, and we would hard-pressed to justify a reason to forcibly prevent a person from receiving it.
Every person also has the right to own property, but they don't have the right to forcibly take it from another person. It's the same with health care. You don't have the right to force someone else to pay for yours.
As Bastiat predicted, we have created a tax system that uses force, or the threat of force, to take the property of one person and give it to another person, and we pretend that taking another persons property is morally acceptable as long as a majority of our elected officials think it will be used for a good cause.
Rights exist for individuals, and they would exist even if the government didn't define them. It doesn't create a conflict to claim that health care is a right, but it does when we claim that free health care is a right. If the government doesn't provide free health care, do you have the right to forcibly take it from someone else? I would maintain no one has that right.
An argument could certainly be made that we have a moral obligation to help those less fortunate among us. I would agree that we do.
But we don't need a government that tries to legislate morals, anymore than we need a government that tries to redefine rights.
Or authorizes plunder.
In a free society the state does not administer the affairs of men. It administers justice among men who conduct their own affairs....Walter Lippman
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"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years." - Alexander Tytler.
Richard,
Another classic. Those old guys could sure see it coming, couldn't they?
"After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd." - Alexis de Tocqueville.
Rex:"An argument could certainly be made that we have a moral obligation to help those less fortunate among us. I would agree that we do.
"But we don't need a government that tries to legislate morals, anymore than we need a government that tries to redefine rights."
We already have a government which legislates morals. How about this story in the KC Chronicle:
"ST. CHARLES – A judge told two Geneva sisters Thursday that their “good intentions” didn’t excuse the condition of their mother in the months before her death.
In that ruling, Jill and Julie Barry, 55 and 48, were convicted on one count each of criminal neglect of an elderly person – a Class 3 felony – in the April 2007 death of their 84-year-old mother Mary Virginia Barry.
Associate Judge Allen Anderson handed down his ruling Thursday morning – about two months after the conclusion of a bench trial that began in April and spanned four days throughout the spring.
“The good intentions of the defendants are not the same as good faith efforts,” Anderson said in explaining his ruling. The law states that Anderson could acquit the Barry sisters if they made a “good faith” effort in caring for their mother.
Source: http://www.kcchronicle.com/articles/2009/08/13/23295456/index.xml
Apparently it's hard to know where the boundaries are, once you get started telling people what to do and how to do it with their own families. Not that I'm condoning this, but it's a short step from here to health care reform....
- Thomas Paine